American Cinematographer - August 1987 - 65

tunately we were able to convince
everybody that it was in the best
interests of the film to go back and
do it again under the proper con¬
ditions. This time we were able to
do it right, using what we learned
from the first shoot, and as it

stands, I think it's

one

of the

funny highlights of the whole
show."
The obligatory, cliche
shot of the entire sequence, a

view of the gigantic
phone booth, was successfully uncliched by Laszlo and Dante, who
combined it with a dolly move to
worms-eye

make it more than just a pretty
shot of some unusual architec¬
ture
it now serves as a dramatic
introduction which also propels
the sequence forward. "As obliga¬
-

that is," Laszlo ad¬
mits, "what helps it is that it
begins as a dolly shot over our
foreground pavement piece and
tory a

shot

as

the wood bench. We follow Fiona
and Kevin who hardly come up
-

to

the seat of the bench as they
behind it and then we pan up
the huge phone booth and that
-

which

run

pod

to

moved.

really

pays

most

reward¬

aspects of this difficult shoot
for Laszlo was the emphasis both
Dante and ILM placed on doing as

ing

of the film's effects live as
possible, which allowed the cin¬
ematographer to shoot much
more of the picture than is usual in
a film of this
type. "I have to give
the people of ILM credit," he says.
"Whenever possible, they advo¬
cated in-camera live special effects.
With all of this wonderful facility
at their disposal, we were still not
denied the incredible pleasure of
being able to improvise on a mo¬
many

ment's notice. We

were

able

to

with effects like cel¬
lophane, smoke and bridal veil
blowing past the window of Den¬
nis Quaid's pod as he seemed to
travel by an endless belt of what
we

was

cranked behind the

both it and the

camera

"For the interior of the

off."

One of the

come

as

up

called 'the River of Liver,'

stomach, which

we

affectionately

called 'the Slab of

Blab,' they built
a very large set which we lit and
added a bit of motion to, as well as
some

simulated stomach acids and

We did all kinds of on¬
special effects which gener¬
ally didn't involve blue screen,
matting or any such tech¬
niques - it was all completely live.
gasses.

stage

Even when

we

had

to

use

blue

would photograph our
live elements for the shot against
screen, we

their blue screen. Obviously, many
of the effects shots in the picture
were done by ILM quite indepen¬

dently of

us,

but there

are a sur¬

prising number of sequences
where Dennis Quaid is floating
through some organ or other in¬
side of Marty Short that were a
joint venture between my princi¬
pal photography unit and ILM."
A

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63
American Cinematographer - August 1987

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